Yesterday I was doom scrolling X late at night hoping to find some nugget about why the Epstein files have yet to be released that would allow me to believe a story besides the most likely (i.e. the files will either never be released or will only be released once they have been sanitized to protect the powers that be). I never did find what I was looking for. However, I did find this gem:
Grimes is on the right track. She’s just looking forward when she should be looking back. What really got me, though, is that there are more than a few commenters that seem to agree with me. In fact, the top comment is this one:
There are several others. Like this one:
Or this one:
It had me wondering: if some compelling evidence came out that Tolkien’s writings were a true history of sorts, how many people would happily adopt the worldview that underpins his tales? I find myself thinking people would flock to it. Maybe it would just be the nerds of the world.
But Mars?
What I also got from that thread was an idea involving Mars. I can’t find the exact tweet but the idea was that Mars is Middle Earth and everything we read in LoTR happened there. The idea is that men fled from Mars long ago to populate earth. Why? Because the poison of Melkor eventually overcame the planet, turning it into the red hellscape we know today and the only chance of survival was to flee.
And that idea made me wonder if that is behind the recent human fascination behind getting (back) to Mars. As in, humanity innately wants to get back home to Mars. Crazy! Lately there is mounting evidence that Mars once had a lot of flowing fresh water and life. Even resort-style beaches, apparently glamorous enough to rival those of Earth!
But you know what’s most intriguing about this idea to me? Maybe we could also make Mars the “promised land” of the BoM. Not the planet surface, obviously, unless we imagine the Lehites have become like the Tusken raiders of Tatooine.
Meaning, we’d have to assume Mars was once a land of beauty and plenty but it has become nearly devoid of life. The Lehites that live there are essentially cave dwellers, perhaps living relatively deep in the earth. Or perhaps the hollow Earth idea is better suited as a hollow Mars idea. Of course, none of this is grounded in any scientific rational thought, but when has that ever stopped us? Mars lacks breathable air, you say? Yes I agree that is a pretty big hurdle.
But on the bright side I initially liked this idea because we don’t have to get the Jaredites, Lehites, and Mulekites into space to get them to the promised land. They would have been on Mars all along and sailed its ancient oceans to reach some other part of Mars that was previously untouched. True, we still end up with a space flight when men depart a dying Mars to come to earth, but it’s not too far (in space terms) and I think well within the limits of elvish methods of travel described in Tolkien’s Legendarium.
It also made me think of Philo Dibble’s drawing:
If I understand Dibble, he’s saying the earth used to be aligned with two other “planets” like this and one day this configuration will return. Maybe it’s something like this:
A=Mars
B=Earth
C=Venus
In that scenario, travel between planets perhaps wasn’t quite as big a deal as it is today.
So that gives us an alternate theory that would still have Mars as the promised land, earth gets to remain as Middle Earth, meaning the Jaredites, Lehites, and Mulekites somehow “sailed” to Mars from Earth. Yes, I know this means I’m back to interpreting their journeys as a space affair, but again, it’s not nearly as far of a space journey as we were thinking before so that helps a little.
I’m obviously spit balling here but maybe the idea has some legs. We’ll see.
WW
While I can’t get behind the idea of actual Beings on Mars, or what you’ve outlined here, there is no doubt that Mars has been a fairly conspicuous symbol lately for some things and has popped up tons of times. For example, in Total Recall Arnold Schwarzenegger shared the same obsession that Elon Musk has in the need to get to Mars. Marty McFly, Chris Martin, and plenty of other characters that I wrote about all had names or stories that conspicuously called out Mars.
This morning I left a comment on William’s blog observing that the name Karl Marx on the Red Book in the image he posted meant “Freeman of Mars”. Right after leaving that comment and a follow up one, I went for a run. I set Spotify to DJ/ random mode, and the first song that was pulled up was a song by the band 30 Seconds to Mars titled “Walk on Water”. It is an interesting song.
Jared Leto is the lead singer for that band. He made the news (and my now erased blog) awhile ago for being the first person to legally climb the Great and Spacious Building, or I mean the Empire State Building, dressed up in a bright Red jumpsuit.
He climbed the building on November 9, 2023. That date is really fascinating given the above. Why? November 9 is a date in French history also known as the 18th Brumaire. So what? The title of Karl Marx’s Red Book in that image which brought on my comment regarding Mars, and which was followed by Jared Leto and his Mars band’s song being pulled up as the first selection, is “The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte”.
Today is the first day of the month that is named for Mars as well.
LEE
Mars is tough to make work, although I do like the idea. I’d have to get really, really creative, like assuming the Lehites who remain on Mars have somehow adapted to its harsh environment. Or I’d have to assume Mars’ environment isn’t at all what we’ve been told. Maybe it has some high tech mirage in place to make it look like a barren wasteland when it’s actually a paradise. Not likely.